Digging into history
Archaeology student to talk about burial moundThis story appeared in the Antelope Valley PressFriday, December 28, 2007.
By BONNIE D. STONE Special to the Valley Press
LANCASTER - For Lyssa C. Stapleton, a graduate student at University of California, Los Angeles' Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, working on summer digs in Albania to which few Westerners have been privy allowed her to study firsthand the burial rituals of a prehistoric society.
Stapleton will speak on "Death and the Maiden: Age and Gender in an Iron Age Burial Mound" for the Antelope Valley branch of the American Association of University Women's meeting, at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 12, in Antelope Valley College's Board Room (SSV 151), 3041 West Avenue K. The meeting is open to the public and refreshments will be served.
For details, call (661) 947-2947 or (661) 942-7533.
"My talk will focus on the special treatment of infants, children and young women," Stapleton said. "Many reconstructions of social organization through mortuary analysis present the primacy of the male role in prehistoric society. But at this site the richest burials are that of juvenile females, children and infants. These findings raise several interesting questions about the population who interred their dead there and the wider society in which they lived."
Between 2004 and 2007, the UCLA team excavated the early Iron Age site, Lofkënd tumulus (burial mound), belonging to the Illyrians, in central Albania. The project is a joint endeavor of the Institute of Archaeology in Tirana, Albania and the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.
The Lofkënd burial mound is in the archaeologically rich Mallakastra region of Central Albania and was apparently in use between 1100 and 600 B.C. It is one of several burial mounds in the area.
"Our excavation seasons were six weeks long and we worked six days a week," said Stapleton, who grew up in the Antelope Valley and graduated from Quartz Hill High School.
"It is very hot and humid in Albania, which is right on the Adriatic. The temperature during the day often got up to 105 degrees, with 100% humidity. We lived in a dig-house located several kilometers from the site. I went back to graduate school to pursue what I had always wanted to do, to study mortuary ritual and material culture, that is to say, how grave goods convey the ritual behavior of a society and what those goods can tell us about the structure of that society.
"I was always particularly interested in Central Europe, so when I found that UCLA had started a project in Albania, I decided that was close enough. In fact, my experience at Lofkënd has made me change my focus slightly; I am now interested in studying the prehistoric Illyrian cultures of modern-day Albania, Croatia and Montenegro."

Calico Ghost Town's New Year's Weekend

Celebrate the last few days of 2007 by visiting Calico Ghost Town’s New Year’s
Celebration Weekend, taking place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, December
28th, 29th, and 30th! This three-day event offers something for everyone including
live music, dancing, children’s games, and a magnificent fireworks display on
Saturday evening! Plus, all of Calico’s unique shops will be open for business
and decorated for the holiday season.

Continuous entertainment will be provided throughout Calico from 12:00 noon to
5:00 p.m. on Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, and 9:00 a.m. to 5:00
p.m. on Sunday. Come listen to some good old-time Western music as Calico
favorite Billy Erickson will entertain you with his cowboy songs and stories. Also
filling Calico with boot-stomping sounds are Grammy nominees Lisa Haley and
the Zydekats!

Looking for some entertainment for your children during the winter break? Bring
them up to Calico and let them release some pent-up energy on the 24-foot
climbing wall, the inflatable bull riding machine, or the virtual calf roping! And
don’t worry, we have plenty of fun and games for adults including line-dancing
lessons, old-west gambling demonstrations and more!

While taking a break from all of the exciting entertainment in Calico, stroll through
the streets and visit the town blacksmith, watch a glass blowing demonstration,
learn how to make a rope with the resident rope maker . . . all of this and much
more will be yours to experience at Calico’s New Year’s celebration weekend!
Make sure to stick around until 6:00 p.m. on Saturday to watch fireworks as they
are shot off the side of the Calico mountain!

For more information on Calico’s New Year’s Celebration Weekend or for
camping reservations please call 1-800-To-Calico or visit us on the Web at
www.calicotown.com.

Local Author shares life as a writer

By Bonnie D. Stone
Special to the Antelope Valley Press
Local author Diana Killian, who loves killing people, planting red herrings and offering virtual tours of the Lake District of England on her web site, will share her life as a writer at the December 12, 7 p.m., book club meeting of the Antelope Valley Branch of the American Association of University Women.
In the first mystery in the Poetic Death series, High Rhymes and Misdemeanors, Diana’s favorite heroine Grace Hollister is vacationing (under guise of researching her dissertation on the Romantic poets) in the English Lake District when she stumbles upon her first (but not her last) body. Before long she’s involved in kidnapping, murder, and the hunt for what she firmly believes is a lost work by Lord Byron. She also becomes involved—against her better judgment—with former jewel thief (now semi-law-abiding antiques dealer) Peter Fox
The Dallas Morning News called the mystery, a "Light, charming... And entertaining romp through a beautiful part of Britain.
For members of the AAUW book group, which meets monthly in members’ homes, it will be a unique chance to learn how an author works. The group, by the way, is the longest-running book group in the Antelope Valley, said Beryl Amspoker, one of the founding members of the Antelope Valley Branch of AAUW. “To the best of my recollection, it was formed as a special interest group in 1951, the year after we started the branch.”
And these women do read – classics, current events, and biographies. Diana’s light-hearted first mystery is being sandwiched in between Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between and Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine Dark Sea.
Diana Killian got her start writing romances before she wrote her first mystery. The next two books in the series after High Rhymes and Misdemeanors, are the Verse of the Vampyre and Sonnet of the Sphinx. In Spring 2008, Corpse Pose, the first book in the new yoga-themed Mantra for Murder series will debut from Berkeley Prime Crime followed by the fourth poetic death novel, Docketful of Poesy in spring, 2009.
Diana is the recipient of a Mystery Writers of America grant, and can be found blogging weekly on the notorious Good Girls Kill For Money Club, www.good-girls-kil.com (which recently received a nod from the London Times Book Review), as well as the Cozy Chicks blog. www.cozychicksblog.com
Blogs are important because writers no longer have the luxury of sitting in a garret composing on a dusty Underwood. They must take an active part in marketing their own works. And, because most everything is internet based, Diana works hard to communicate her name and her mysteries on the internet. Check out her web site www.girl-detective.net